Styles

Styles

With this combo you can apply an existing style to selected paragraphs, create a new style, and even apply modifications to the current style. The usage is very similar to MS Word standard. With “Format >Styles” you have even more options yet.

What’s a style?

Text styles are a quick way to apply font, line and margins settings to a paragraph. Use styles to add a consistent “look and feel” to all your pages.

Why should I use styles?

To appreciate the advantages of using styles take a look to this hypertext itself (you can open it in the editor, search for indexRA.aeh).

Each single page has a title, this title has the same look on each page, the look of the title is different from the look of the text. In fact the title is larger and has a different color. If we define a style for the title (for example “Title”) and one for the text (for example “Text”) we meet two points:

we make editing fast (in this page, if the style “Title” isn’t available, to have the same result we should select the title text, apply the “Arial” font, apply bold, apply 15pt size, apply red color...; with styles we only have to click on the “Title” style on the combo box)

we can modify more pages at a time (if we want a green title on all pages, we have only to modify the style, with “Format >Paragraph style...”, and all pages will have a green title).

How can I use styles?

There are many ways to use styles.

Create new style:

- the simplest way is to modify a text block with the toolbar buttons. For example, select a word with the mouse, apply bold, apply 15 as size. Then type a name in the styles combo, for example “MyNewStyle” and press Enter. RoboAuthor will show a confirmation window. Choose OK and the style “MyNewStyle” will be available in the styles combo.

- another way is "Format >New style..."

Apply a style to a paragraph or a text block:

- click on the styles combo box arrow. If you open the present file in the editor you will see it contains many different styles, for example: List, SubList, Text, Title . If you click on any of these items, the selected paragraphs will be reformatted by using the selected style.

- another way is to type an existing style name in the styles combo, then press Enter.

Change style settings:

- select a text block, then apply modifications. Then enter in styles’ combo and press Enter. In the window that appears, choose “Modify style by using selected text as example”.

- another way is to use "Format >Styles...", then to select a style and apply changes.

See / modify current paragraph style:

- use "Format >Paragraph style.."

Reformat a paragraph with a style:

- if you simply apply a style to a paragraph, pre-existing format is retained. If you want to clear all formats, because you want all paragraph settings identical to style settings, use "Format >Reformat" (CTRL+F6). Click here for more information on formats.